The National Council of Agricultural Employers, several agricultural associations, and individual farmers have filed a lawsuit to stop new regulations regarding temporary agricultural workers.
The group said its lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, aims to protect farm and ranch families across the country from the Department of Labor’s “unlawful and unconstitutional” final rule, “Improving Protections for Workers in Temporary Agricultural Employment in the United States,” according to a news release.
NCAE said the rule unlawfully violates the rights of U.S. farm and ranch families by stripping employers of the due process rights afforded to them by the Constitution, imposing new illogical duties on farmers that infantilize and jeopardize the safety of their farmworkers, allowing temporary foreign agricultural workers to unionize — a right not extended to U.S. farmworkers, and more.
On Aug. 29 the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia issued a preliminary injunction in the case of Kansas, et al. vs. U.S. Department of Labor, which enjoined the rule from taking effect in Georgia, Kansas, South Carolina, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia, as well as for certain individuals and entities, leaving farmers and ranchers with operations in the two-thirds of states not covered by the injunction vulnerable to substantive provisions of the rule.
In the injunction, the court said that “agencies may play the sorcerer’s apprentice but not the sorcerer himself. The [rule] is an attempt by the [department] to play the sorcerer. The [department] may assist Congress but may not become Congress.”
The Department of Labor issued a statement Sept. 10 on its website that it would begin processing applications from employers not covered by the injunction in accordance with the final rule on Sept. 12, the release said. The department said the agency would process applications for employers covered by the injunction in accordance with the regulations that were in effect prior, thereby creating a new multiple-application process.
“Rather than taking heed of the Judge’s wise words and withdraw the Rule in its entirety, the department decided to further complicate matters for farm and ranch families by creating a bifurcated application process at the whim of the Acting Secretary’s pen rather than through true notice-and-comment rulemaking,” Michael Marsh, president and CEO of NCAE, said in the release. “This is something the acting secretary and her department know they cannot do.
“America’s hardworking farmers and ranchers are deeply troubled by the department’s lack of regard for the important work they do each day ensuring that Americans have food to enjoy on their tables,” Marsh continued. “The council and our colleagues in this litigation are hopeful the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Kentucky will understand and agree that this rule must be dissolved once and for all.”
